The Seven Deadly Sins: Lust
--Galatians 5:16-26
The late Rev. Dr. John Rowan Claypool IV served as a pastor for 47 years, first in Southern Baptist Congregations in the South and then from 1986 to 2000 as the Rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Birmingham, Alabama. In his sermon entitled “The Future and Forgetting,” he shares this story:
“Two Buddhist monks were walking in a drenching thunderstorm. They came to a stream, and it was swollen out of its banks. A beautiful young Japanese woman in a kimono stood there wanting to get to the other side but was afraid of the currents. In characteristic Buddhist compassion, one of the monks said, ‘Can I help you?’
“The woman said, ‘I need to cross this stream.’”
“The monk picked her up, put her on his shoulder, carried her through the water, and put her down on the other side. He and his companion went on to the monastery.
“That night his companion said to him, ‘I have a bone to pick with you. As Buddhist monks, we have taken vows not to look on a woman, much less touch her body. Back there by the river you did both.’
“The first monk said, ‘My brother, I put that woman down on the other side of the river. You’re still carrying her in your mind.’” [SOURCE: --John Rowan Claypool, “The Future and Forgetting,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 109.]
Dr. Claypool’s story is an appropriate analogy of the sin our Judeo-Christian faith acknowledges as lust. Jewish rabbis through the centuries have condemned all sin not only as evil actions but also as evil desires that begin as a bad attitude in the heart. Jesus distinctly teaches in His Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:27-28, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Lust is an inner attitude or desire in one’s heart.
In Scripture it is difficult to distinguish between covetousness and lust. In the New Testament the same group of words that becomes “to covet” or covetousness in English is the same one for lust. A portion of the Tenth Commandment declares “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.”
The group of words in the original Greek New Testament that translates either as covetousness or lust basically refers to “a strong desire or longing for something.” Covetousness is too strong a desire for materialistic gain. Lust implies a strong, unhealthy, inappropriate, immoral sexual desire that is in conflict with the will of God. It is any “impulsive sensual desire that is contrary to the will and pleasure of God.” It is wrong, sensual, selfish, sexual desires that oppose the revealed will of God in our intimate, sexual relationships with one another.
Craig Brian Larson, a Chicago pastor, wears many hats including serving as editor of the pastors’ resource “Preachingtoday.com.” He is especially talented in providing pastors with great anthologies from the movies that are excellent illustrations for sermons.
He shares this story. “As a kid, I saw a movie in which some shipwrecked men are left drifting aimlessly on the ocean in a lifeboat. As the days pass under the scorching sun, their rations of food and fresh water give out. The men grow deliriously thirsty. One night, while the others are asleep, one man ignores all previous warnings and gulps down some salt water. He quickly dies.
“Ocean water contains seven times more salt than the human body can safely ingest. Drinking it, a person dehydrates because the kidneys demand extra water to flush the overload of salt. The more salt water someone drinks, the thirstier he gets. He actually dies of thirst.
Lusting makes us like this man. “We thirst desperately for something that looks like what we want. We don’t realize, however, that it is precisely the opposite of what we really need. In fact it can kill us.” [SOURCE: Craig Brian Larson].
I also appreciate Billy Graham’s insight: “There must be firm control of the sex impulse. This God-given instinct has been dragged through the gutter by modern thinking, and we have made a cheap toy out of the most sacred gifts God has given us. Our procreative powers need to be dedicated to Christ.” [SOURCE: --Billy Graham, The Quotable Billy Graham, Compiled and Edited by Cort R. Flint and the staff of Quote, (Anderson, S. C.: Droke House, 1966).].
When practiced within the boundaries our Creator has set, there is nothing more sacred and holy than the intimate relationship between a man and a woman. This has been God’s plan since He created the human race. After He created our first parents, Genesis 1:28 tells us “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Then Genesis 2:24 affirms: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.”
Lust, as Billy Graham has pointed out, “drags God’s relationship that was created to be sacred and holy through the gutter”; and, as Larson has so well reminded us, “even though it looks like what we want, it not only is opposite of what we really need; it can kill us.”
Lust in Scripture, especially in the New Testament Epistles, is human “desire for what God has forbidden.” It is an “obsessive sexual craving.” The sexual drive is a natural human instinct. God created us male and female and gave us His blessing to “be fruitful and multiply.” His plan has always been for one man to be united to one woman as husband and wife and enjoy becoming one flesh.
We have perverted God’s will and plan in countless ways. Instead of honoring the holy institution of marriage as sacred and pleasing in God’s eyes, we have longed for the forbidden and become obsessive in our craving to fulfill our God given desire. In place of honoring the intimacy of marriage, we have exploited God’s gift through such perversions as rape, incest, sexual abuse, pedophilia, prostitution, pornography, and homosexuality.
Our traditional marriage vows are Biblical and unmistakably warn us of the dangers when we pervert God’s holy institution of marriage: “Be well assured that so many as are joined together otherwise than God’s Word allows, are not joined together by God; neither is their matrimony lawful in His sight.”
Those same traditional vows affirm the blessing God bestows on those couples who obediently surrender to His divine purpose and plan for holy matrimony: “Be well assured that if these solemn vows are kept inviolate, as God’s Word demands, and if steadfastly you endeavor to do the will of your Heavenly Father, God will bless your marriage, will grant you fulfillment in it, and will establish your home in peace.”
The Greek City of Corinth was one of the most vile, wicked, immoral cities in New Testament times. The patron goddess of the city was Aphrodite or Venus. She was the goddess of free, unrestrained love. Her worshipers were lewd, immoral, and sexually unrestrained. A thousand professional prostitutes served as priests and priestesses in her temple. In the King James Version of I Corinthians 5:1 we read: “It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife.”
The word for FORNICATION in Greek is PORNEIA, the root of our English word pornography. It literally means “harlotry” and includes “adultery” and “incest.” The verb suggests indulging in unlawful lust! It is an all inclusive term denoting “any kind of sexual immorality.” Although I Corinthians 5:1 a specific situation of a man cohabiting with his stepmother, all kinds of sexual immorality are included in PORNEIA and were practiced in Corinth.
Paul brings up the matter of sexual immorality again in I Corinthians 6:18-20: “Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.”
Fornication, any kind of sexual immorality, unlawful lust is “sin against one’s own body.” As Christians our bodies are the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Rather than sinning against God’s temple, we Christians glorify Him with our bodies. Almost daily we read or hear about the harm, destruction, and even death that such sexually transmitted diseases as gonorrhea, herpes, syphilis, and HIV/AIDS bring on so many in our society all because they failed to realize that something which looked like what they wanted in reality was something that could kill us. When we fail to glorify God in our bodies, we eventually pay the consequences.
Fulfilling one’s sexual desires is sin only when done in a way contrary to the will and pleasure of God, and His will and pleasure is for our fulfillment to come within the bonds of holy matrimony. We experience victory over lust when we “let the Holy Spirit take control of all we do.”
Galatians five gives us God’s key for victory over lust. Note particularly verses 24 and 25: “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires (or lusts). If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.” The question for each of us becomes, “Have I crucified the flesh along with its lusts?”
To crucify something means to execute it, to put it to death. The tense of the verb “have crucified” points to a specific time in the past when I made such a commitment to Jesus. It is a specific time in my spiritual pilgrimage when I nailed my illicit, lewd desires for sexual gratification to the cross and let them die. Then and only then can I live my life by the power of the Holy Spirit and be guided by Him.
Those who continue to yield to the desire for sexual pleasure in any form forbidden by God—be it rape, incest, sexual abuse, pedophilia, prostitution, pornography, or homosexuality—“will not inherit the kingdom of God.” This is the deadly sin of lust.
The key to overcoming lust is personal surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Let the Holy Spirit lead you. Do not yield to your own lusts, but walk in the power of the Spirit. When we are led by and walk in the power of the Holy Spirit, God blesses the intimate relationship of husband and wife in holy matrimony.
I sincerely respected, admired, and appreciated CBS 2 Chicago’s morning anchor Randy Salerno, who was tragically killed in a snowmobile accident on Thursday, January 24, 2008, in the Eagle River Area of Wisconsin, only 20 days after his forty-fifth birthday. That morning I had watched him on the 11:00 a. m. news as I finished my daily workout at the Kankakee Area YMCA. The next morning at the Y I heard her colleagues announce the news of his untimely passing.
On Wednesday, January 30th, my car doors were frozen shut; I did not make it to the “Y”; therefore, I was one of the almost 70,000 persons that watched the live cam broadcast of Randy’s inspiring funeral. His wife Irene was the final one to speak at the service and paid this tribute to Randy: “Randy was my soul mate, and throughout our twelve years together I can honestly say that love only grew. There was never a day went by but what he would tell me how lucky he was and how much he loved me and our children.” [SOURCE:http://cbs2chicago.com/video/?id=39226@wbbm.dayport.com].
Randy Salerno was a magnificent role model for his wife and children, for the youth of Chicago and our entire region, and for all husbands, fathers, and would-be husbands, and fathers whose lives he touched. Our American churches and society need many more such role models for our youth to emulate today.
My brothers and sisters, the relationship and intimacy that Randy and Irene Salerno shared is God’s will, pleasure, and plan for all husbands and wives, for all our homes and families. That’s the love and intimacy that is in keeping with His will and pleasure for our lives. That’s the kind of relationship we can enjoy when we have “crucified the flesh along with its lusts.” That’s a genuine example of what it is like to walk and be guided by the Holy Spirit in our marriage and family relationships.
Lust, “the desire for what God has forbidden,” any form of obsessive sexual craving is a deadly sin, but our God is a God of grace. As a Holy God he must punish sin, including lust or fornication, but because of His infinite love and mercy, He freely gives His forgiveness to all who truly repent of their sins, turn from their wicked ways, and trust Jesus for eternal life. Let us not cheapen the most “sacred gifts God has given to us.” May our procreative powers be forever controlled by the Holy Spirit and dedicated to our Lord Jesus Christ.
